How to run Blender GUI on headless Oracle Cloud through VNC?
The compute must be VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro (AMD processor) or VM.Standard.A1.Flex (ARM processor). Both can be tried on their free tier. I am using the Ubuntu 22.04 image.
When through terminal
It works without problems:
> sudo apt-get install -y blender
> blender --version
Color management: using fallback mode for management
Color management: Error could not find role data role.
Blender 3.0.1
> blender test.blend --background --render-frame 1 --render-output '/tmp/out_####' -F PNG --engine CYCLES -noaudio
Fra:1 Mem:42.93M (Peak 44.01M) | Time:00:03.10 | Syncing Cube
Fra:1 Mem:42.96M (Peak 44.01M) | Time:00:03.14 | Syncing Light
Fra:1 Mem:42.96M (Peak 44.01M) | Time:00:03.14 | Syncing Camera
Fra:1 Mem:42.96M (Peak 44.01M) | Time:00:03.30 | Rendering 1 / 4 samples
...
When through SSH X11 forwarding
It works without problems, except that it is excessively slow:
$ ssh -X user@ip_address
> sudo apt-get install -y blender
> blender
Starting Blender takes a whole minute, and closing the startup window takes 10 seconds. Moving around takes 10 seconds too.
When through VNC over reverse SSH tunnelling
$ ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 user@ip_address
> sudo apt-get install -y blender freeglut3 tightvncserver xfce4
> tightvncserver -nolisten tcp -localhost :1
and then running blender through the VNC GUI:
> blender
Xlib: extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":1".
./intern/ghost/intern/GHOST_WindowX11.cpp:136: X11 glXQueryVersion() failed, verify working openGL system!
initial window could not find the GLX extension
Color management: using fallback mode for management
Color management: Error could not find role data role.
Color management: scene view "Filmic" not found, setting default "Standard".
Writing: /tmp/blender.crash.txt
and downloading latest version of Blender from the website:
> ./blender
Xlib: extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":1".
Error! GLX_ARB_create_context not available.
Error! GLX_ARB_create_context not available.
Error! GLX_ARB_create_context not available.
Error! GLX_ARB_create_context not available.
Error! GLX_ARB_create_context not available.
Error! GLX_ARB_create_context not available.
Error! GLX_ARB_create_context not available.
Error! Unsupported graphics card or driver.
A graphics card and driver with support for OpenGL 3.3 or higher is required.
The program will now close.
